Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 08:24:20 +0200 From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) To: freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: cracauer@cons.org (Martin Cracauer) Subject: Re: Formatting DISK 256 bytes/sec => 512b/sec Message-ID: <19970822082420.JF08302@uriah.heep.sax.de> In-Reply-To: <199708211916.VAA05817@cons.org>; from Martin Cracauer on Aug 21, 1997 21:16:44 %2B0200 References: <199708211916.VAA05817@cons.org>
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As Martin Cracauer wrote: > b) I tried 'scsiformat -p d -w', and it formatted without error > message. However, the disk was still 256 Bytes/sec afterwards. You're miscomprehending the -p d option. It doesn't promise you to cause some kind of `default' formatting. The entire informational display in scsiformat(8) is fairly crude, it has only been inherited from the (defunct) 4.4BSD scsiformat(8) code. Our scsi(8) is a much better tool for this. > Running 'scsiformat -p d' shows that the default configuration is in > fact 512 bytes/sector and only the user-setable one is 256 > bytes/sector. No, that's just the block size from the block descriptor in a mode sense command. It isn't necessarily related to the physical sector size of the drive, it's just the granularity you're using in transfers to the device on the bus. There are at least two methods i remember how to convince a SCSI drive of another sector size (if possible at all). One was to issue a mode select with a new blocksize, and then immediately format the drive. I think that's been the IBM way. I think the other way was to edit mode page 3 (scsi -f /dev/rsdX.ctl -e -m 3 -P 3), and then reformat. ISTR that i've successfully did this with an older Maxtor drive (just to see whether it works). Of course, there's a third group of drives that have a fixed vendor format, and cannot be changed. I remember Quantum proudly claiming once that their drives cannot be reformatted. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
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